FORTUNE Cover Package Investigates 'Supersizing of America'; Stories Look At Eating Habits in...

Business Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 21, 2003

Junk food may not be addictive in the same way that tobacco is.

But weight, once gained, is notoriously hard to loose, and childhood weight patterns strongly predict adult ones. Rates of obesity among small children--to whom junk food companies aggressively market their products--have doubled since 1980, while rates among adolescents have tripled. With lawsuits being filed against fast-food companies on behalf

of obese and overweight children, a new arena of class action litigation is on the horizon. FORTUNE's Roger Parloff reports on this new legal terrain in "Is Fat the Next Tobacco?" The story appears in the February 3 issue of FORTUNE, available on newsstands January 27 and at www.fortune.com January 22.

"Seasoned lawyers from both sides of the mass-tort disputes agree that the years ahead hold serious tobacco-like litigation challenges for the food industry--challenges that extend beyond fast foods to snack foods, soft drinks, packaged foods, and dietary supplements," says Parloff. "Though many people recoil at the idea of obesity suits--eating habits are a matter of personal responsibility, they protest--the tobacco precedents show that such qualms can be overcome." While the food industry, according to Parloff, is not apt to be socked with anything like the penalties that hit tobacco, companies will face consumer-protection suits that might cost them many tens of millions of dollars and force them to significantly change marketing practices.

And with fast food, snack food and soft drink companies focusing their marketing on children and adolescents through Saturday morning TV commercials, cuddly characters like Ronald McDonald, toys included with meals, and contracts to advertise and serve in schools, lawyers have a better starting point than suing on behalf of adults, who after all have more ability to choose what to eat and not eat. "Once cases progress into the discovery stage," says Parloff, "smoking-gun documents may begin to emerge, showing that companies knew more than the general public about the impact of their products and advertising were having on children's health."

In a related story, "We've Got to Stop Eating Like This," Tim Smith asks what it would take to transform our diet on a national scale. "The problem is huge and depressingly simple," says Smith. "The U.S. food industry provides about 3,900 calories per person per day (the figure is for 2000, the latest available). Allowing for waste and losses in cooking, the USDA estimates that the average American consumes roughly 2,750 calories per day--a full Big Mac beyond its recommendation of 2,220 calories for most children, teenage girls, active women and sedentary men. Of course, diet and exercise are matters of individual choice, but cultural circumstances--car travel, post-industrial jobs, passive entertainment--push us collectively toward eating more calories than we burn. So do the roughly $4.5 billion a year the food industry spends on advertising and the $50 million a year it spends lobbying in Washington, D.C."

With obesity leading to diabetes in young children, and to problems such as heart attacks and high blood pressure in adults, something beyond "national willpower" will be needed to cause Americans to eat less, and better, reports Smith.

In a related story, "Uphill Battle," Julie Schlosser looks at Union Pacific's efforts to help its employees--mostly middle-aged men--improve their health and shed pounds. The result? "Employee smoking rates, cholesterol levels, and blood pressure are down," says Schlosser. "Yet the workforce is fatter than ever. Union Pacific's story shows just how tough it is for any employer to help its people slim down."

And in "The Quest for the Antifat Pill," David Stipp reports on slimming aids that are in the pharmaceutical pipeline. Are drugs--with their potentially bad side effects--necessary for weight loss? "Research on weight, hormones and the brain," concludes Stipp, "has made it even clearer that obesity is basically a state of mind--and we don't necessarily need drugs to change our minds."